Lothar von Falkenhausen obtained a PhD in anthropology at Harvard University in 1988. Having taught at Stanford University and UC Riverside, he came to UCLA in 1993 and was promoted to Professor in 1997. His research concerns the archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age, preferably focusing on large interdisciplinary and historical issues on which archaeological materials can provide significant new information. One example of this orientation are his numerous publications on musical instruments (especially chime-bells), culminating in his book Suspended Music (University of California Press, 1993). Other publications concern ancient Chinese bronzes and their inscriptions, ritual, regional cultures, archaeological synthesis, ancient trans-Asiatic contacts, and methodological issues. As the American co-PI of the ongoing Peking University-UCLA Joint Archaeological Project, he is directing excavations at ancient salt-production sites in the Yangzi River Basin. He serves as editor of the Journal of East Asian Archaeology and of the Early China Special Monographs Series.

Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius is based on the most up-to-date archaeological discoveries. It introduces new data, as well as new ways to think about them - modes of analysis that, while familiar to archaeological practitioners in the West and in Japan, are herein applied to evidence from the Chinese Bronze Age for the first time. The treatment of social stratification, clan and lineage organisation, as well as gender and ethnic differences will be of interest to those involved in the general or comparative analysis of grand themes in the Social Sciences.